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“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny
― Roger Zelazny
2/11/2020 0 Comments February 11th, 2020Writing Process RoundtableHello again everybody. For today’s blog post in my English Composition I Course, I will be having an imaginary conversation among three authors in a roundtable discussing a writer’s writing process. In this dialogue, I will be using 3 quotes from each author to develop the dialogue and the links to these authors will be shown below:
I believe that writing in general is broken up into sequences to help the writer get a better feel of what he needs to improve on. Don Murray replied, “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: pre-writing, writing and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages.” To be honest with you guys, in the past I always believed that writing was a waste of time so I never put a lot of effort into doing it. Mary Karr commented, “Every writer I know who's worth a damn spent way more time ‘losing’ than ‘winning'." I am the type of person to take breaks when I have a hard time writing, it makes me feel good and when my brain feels refreshed, I am able to think twice as better than before. Anne Lamott responded, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes including you.” I remember having an English class in 11th Grade, my teacher would make us do projects which included segments called ‘drafts’ and pretty much, my first few drafts were horribly. I’m not sure if it’s a thing where you would come out with bad first drafts then it starts to get better overtime. Are there any insights? Anne Lamott responded, “Now, practically even better news than that of short assignment has the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second jobs and terrific third drafts.” For some reason, whenever I would write anything, whether it’s a story or an essay, I would always get a bad grade or be criticized for poor conduct and I would usually be less motivated to do other writings. What would any of you guys have to say about this? Don Murray responded, “No matter how careful are criticisms, they do not help the student when we teach composition we are not teaching the product, we are teaching a process .” Whenever I do writing, I would usually rewrite them to check for grammatical errors. What are other reasons why rewriting is a good tool? Mary Karr commented, "Rewriting on the page is safer than revision in, say, painting, when you can paint past a good place and wreck a canvas. Performers can't revise at all. A writer can always go back to an earlier draft. The point is to have more curiosity about possible forms the work could take than a sense of self-protection for your ego." What are some true underground strategies that only a few writers use to get the best out of what they’re writing? Don Murray responded, “Reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the market place. History's harder- but also more stable and the books are better because they have been culled over years.” I need to understand something, what are the difficulties or process that teachers go through when teaching a writing course to students with little or no experience? Don Murray again responded, “We have to be patient and wait, and wait, and wait. The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do the pre-writing for our students they would not learn the largest part of the writing process. “ If people are too afraid to express their emotions through writing, what is the best advice to give that type of audience? Anne Lamott made the final response, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
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Jeanliq MendezI will use this blog to explore the messy processes of writing and to make meaning. Archives
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